Two million eyes, one million laughs – all at Stephen Harper’s expense.
A hilarious website with video spoofs, featuring the hardened Conservative warrior wearing a fuzzy sweater and snuggling an adorable kitten, launched and crashed Wednesday within hours due to overwhelming popularity.
The incongruous image – originally a photograph arguably crafted with keen attention to political optics – served as inspiration for a crew of Vancouver comedians and digital artists who launched www.shitharperdid.com that reached the viral milestone of one million hits.
“It was a half-cooked way to become relatable to this entire nation,” said site programmer Cam Dales, a new Vancouverite whose parents live in Harper’s Calgary riding. “It was just so crazy to see this photo (of Harper snuggling a kitten). We figured we would draw that thing and stick it up.”
Breakdowns in the province’s healthcare system are putting hospital emergency rooms on life support, according to a B.C. Nurses Union official.
“If emergency wards are functioning properly the patients come in, get assessed, and treated then triaged to the units or the proper wards where they can be looked after,” said Janice Buchanan, the union’s vice-president. “They’re not meant to have admitted patients languishing in their hallways.”
Buchanan’s comments came Monday outside New Westminster’s Royal Columbian Hospital where a month earlier the Tim Hortons outlet in the institution was used as a sickbay to treat four patients for 90 minutes. At the time, then health minister Colin Hansen defended the use of the coffee shop.
Since then, the provincial government has broken ground for new developments at Surrey Memorial Hospital and B.C. Children’s and Women’s Hospitals in Vancouver.
Vancouver Coun. Suzanne Anton will take Gregor Robertson to task when city council next convenes over a growing perception city staff is bending to whims of the mayor’s financial backers.
Donor Joel Solomon urged non-partisan city staffer Sadhu Johnston to lure to Vancouver, Salt Spring Coffee – financed by his firm Renewal Partners, according to emails obtained by QMI.
When informed of the correspondence, Anton chastised Robertson for installing a new system at city hall “where there’s less distinction between the political and the staff.”
“I think it is completely inappropriate for the mayor’s largest backer to have what seems to be an intimate access to staff,” she said. “There is a very close relationship here between the funders and their man in City Hall, Mayor Robertson.”
Premier-designate Christy Clark juggled the responsibilities of a working mother her first day on the job.
"Work started today," British Columbia's premier mom said Sunday outside Trout Lake Rink where her son, Hamish, was the starting goalie for the Vancouver Thunderbirds in an Atom A4 playoff game. "I was up at 6 o'clock this morning."
Clark narrowly rose to power over rival Kevin Falcon one night earlier on the third ballot of the B.C. Liberal leadership vote, in which 60,000-plus members participated.
Between attending meetings and worship at church, the ex-deputy premier said she had already begun leafing through transition binders to prepare her for the position of premier.
Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts took a pass on leading the B.C. Liberals.
In a statement released Sunday night, Watts cited family commitments to her two daughters and husband, the prospect of building a successful municipality, and a long-ruling B.C. Liberal government as her reasons not to enter provincial politics.
"As the B.C. Liberal Party seeks to renew and refresh their party and their government, they will go through an important period of self-examination and reflection that is naturally part of any leadership race," she said. "This process should, and I believe in many ways must, be an internal one."
Watts also questioned the quality of debate in a "polarized" political landscape in light of VANOC CEO John Furlong and ex-Finance Minister Carole Taylor refusing to enter politics.
Build it and they will come. Devote every working minute to building it well over the last two decades, and they will come by the thousands.
Such is the case for Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts.
The First Lady of the Fraser Valley's tireless schedule was evidenced at her appearance Wednesday at Central City Plaza where thousands came out to see the Stanley Cup.
She shook every hand, fielded every question from media and even got a moment to pose with Lord Stanley's mug beside her daughters.
Council cameras were off, but microphones were not when Mayor Gregor Robertson lashed out against speakers concerned over the composition of the West End community planning committee.
"Who are all these f--king ... who are these hacks man? Are they ... they NPA (Non-Partisan Association) hacks?" Robertson said to Coun. Tim Stevenson and Coun. Heather Deal as chambers were cleared during a break between late-night sessions Thursday.
Robertson, Stevenson and Deal went on to mock and laugh at the list of speakers who called for greater transparency in the selection of a 12-person committee that will advise council on rezoning the West End.
"God, we're just tryin' to have a little advisory committee, for f--k sakes," Robertson concluded.
Former Premier Bill Vander Zalm has launched a legal challenge to kill the dreaded harmonized sales tax dead in its tracks.
In a petition for judicial review filed on Monday to B.C. Supreme Court, Vander Zalm's attorney Joseph Arvay argued the HST violates core principles of the Constitution by allowing for taxation without representation because the federal-provincial pact to enact tax was never ratified or approved in legislature.
"The constitution does not allow you, or [Premier Gordon] Campbell, or I, or the [finance] minister to impose a tax on the people," Vander Zalm explained on the steps outside B.C. Supreme Court in downtown Vancouver. "Only the legislature can do that and this has been recognized in every other province."
The Vancouver School Board could close up to 10 schools in effort to balance its books, chairwoman Patti Bacchus said Thursday.
Bacchus couldn't say which schools would go as the board's management team must now assess present and potential enrollment numbers, potential revenue generated at each site and programs offered at the schools.
"It's not a simple decision and we have to consider where enrollment comes from. At this point I can't speculate forward," she said, adding staff would present a list of potential closures June 23.
All high schools citywide would likely remain open, she said.
Not a day old and the Dunsmuir bike lane had already proved bad for business, according to a downtown shopkeeper.
Minutes before Mayor Gregor Robertson officially opened the two-way protected lane for cyclists Tuesday morning, Igor Kivritsky, owner of HiFi Centre, told 24 hours he stands to lose more than $1 million in sales this year because westbound drivers are no longer permitted to make right turns on Seymour Street.
He added, deliverymen piloting five-tonne trucks must double as stunt drivers to navigate a "teeny tiny" divide in the barrier that allows access to an alley which his Seymour Street shop backs out on.
"Our genius mayor made it difficult for our clients to get here," charged the high-end electronics retailer. "He just sits there with his big smile and says, 'Tough. This is what I want to do to advance my political career.'"
Inner-city school principals supported by a former Dean of Education claimed Wednesday the provincial government has failed to adequately fund schools.
The charge was made two days before the deadline for the Vancouver School Board to solve a $17 million budget shortfall and submit a balanced budget to the Education Minister based on hotly- debated recommendations made in a comptroller general's report.
"What [we are] left with is a top-down implementation of education in the province with a centralized form of governance that leaves other stakeholder groups with little voice," said SFU professor emeritus Paul Shaker.
Noel Herron, former principal of Strathcona Elementary School, expressed deep concern over the comptroller's suggestions to cut non-core programs such as junior kindergarten.
UFC may be in town this week, but the bigger fight is going on between Vancouver School Board and the provincial education minister.
The latest gloves-off bout went down after an hour- long meeting was cut short Tuesday morning when Minister Margaret MacDiarmid emerged and described the encounter at SFU Harbour Centre as "difficult" and "challenging".
The two sides, bound under the province's school act, are fighting over money, according to VSB chairwoman Patti Bacchus.
"She doesn't really want to talk about funding," Bacchus said of MacDiarmid. "We know school districts throughout B.C. will say - and certainly our B.C. School Trustees Association has said - that the top three issues for education in B.C. are funding, funding, funding, yet we have a minister who refuses to talk about the issue."
Earning a modest living in Vancouver continues to grow increasingly difficult, according to a study released today by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
$18.17 is the hourly living wage needed for two parents working full time, who are raising two children to afford basic expenses such as rental housing, childcare, groceries and transportation.
The per-hour amount increased $1.43 from the last calculation made in 2008 or roughly double the rate inflation.
Seth Klein, co-author of Working for a Living Wage 2010, said the hard choices struggling families must make today are based on more than deciding on living in the suburbs and commuting work.
Signs of Vancouver's waning exotic dance scene are showing in a charity event to benefit breast cancer research.
The 7th annual Exotic Dancers For Cancer is happening at Cecil Exotic Show Lounge Wednesday night for one last time before the developer's wrecking ball demolishes the downtown strip club.
"We are losing another strip club in Vancouver, which is tragic," said Ryann Rain, who's coming out of retirement for the cancer benefit. "That means more girls will have to go to Alberta to pay rent."
Fewer dancers are able to donate shows because more women are opting for paying gigs or touring neighbouring provinces, Rain explained.
Vancouver has the capacity to create sustainable environmental change but lacks the influence and dollars to turn green dreams into reality, according to Mayor Gregor Robertson.
"We have a governance structure that's well over a century old," Mayor Robertson said Thursday at green business summit GLOBE 2010. "We don't have the tools to effectively finance and drive the change and that's where I'm most worried right now -- that we're totally reliant on a provincial and federal government who have a lot of other things to manage, and an incredible array of responsibilities, and they can't focus in on what cities need on a daily basis."
A dozen local businesses have signed on to a new City of Vancouver program designed to evaluate carbon emissions, Mayor Gregor Robertson said.
The Corporate Climate Leaders Program, unveiled Wednesday at GLOBE 2010, sees the city split $75,000 in operating costs with Vancouver-based Climate Smart, EcoTrust Canada and Metro Vancouver in a bid to help businesses go green.
"This is evaluating carbon emissions using the expert knowledge and resources we have to develop a game plan to reduce their emissions or to find ways in which the company can benefit from the low carbon economy," Mayor Robertson said.
Officials must address racism head on in light of Statistics Canada numbers projecting Greater Vancouver’s visible minority population would double to more than 2 million by 2031, said the director of a province-wide diversity study.
Of the 2 million visible minorities who would make up 60 per cent of the region’s population, according to the study, one-in-three would be Canadian born.
“How are we going to help this second generation to be true equitable members of our society,” asked Miu Chung Yan with Metropolis British Columbia. “That’s the challenge that I don’t think Canadian policy makers are paying attention to.”
Vancouver police want to keep surveillance cameras rolling in the entertainment district.
“As a crowd management tool it was very powerful for our people working in the department’s operations centre because they could radio [officers],” Vancouver Deputy Chief Const. Doug LePard said of camera use during the Winter Olympics.
“Being on the ground you could only see a small piece of what’s going on. We would get reports from the operations centre who could look anywhere with the video, and say, hey look, there’s a problem developing here.”
Police, however, aren’t sure if cameras deterred criminal activity because their effect is hard to measure, LePard said at a debriefing on the Games Monday.
A movement aimed at disrupting demand for paid sex during the Olympics has landed on the doorsteps of Vancouver’s exotic show lounges.
T he federal government is foolish in attempting to close Vancouver’s supervised drug-injection site through an appeal with Supreme Court of Canada, said a concerned client.
Justice Minister Rob Nicholson said Tuesday in Ottawa the feds would return to court after a B.C. Supreme Court decision ruled Insite to be a medical facility, which falls under provincial jurisdiction. The Conservatives’ Anti-Drug Strategy centres on access to treatment and prevention with a stern law-and-order approach towards drug production and distribution.
“Do you think that they’re going to control any of this,” asked Terry, gesturing from inside the centre near Main and East Hastings Streets towards the frenetic open-air drug market bustling on the other side of a secured glass window. “This is the Olympics and nothing has changed.”
For Terry, on the other hand, change has come slowly and steadily since he first went to Insite for therapy more than five years ago.